There are several ways of looking at the interactions between our life situations and what’s triggered in us.
THE SITUATION TRIGGERS SOMETHING IN ME
The most common one is to see a situation as triggering something in me.
My neighbor is using his noisy lawn mover, and it’s triggering an issue in me around noise.
If we look more closely here, we’ll see that the situation in itself is not triggering anything. It’s my thoughts about it that triggers the issue in me.
My perception of the situation triggers someting in me, and that perception is part of what’s unhealed and unresolved in me.
This is a very useful way to look at it, especially if we look at it more closely. It means that I can use ordinary life situations, and how I respond to them, to identify and explore something unhealed and unresolved in myself.
MY PERCEPTION CREATES MY WORLD
My perception creates my world, in a couple of different ways.
The stories I have about a situation, shapes how I perceive it and respond to it. These stories are the difference between stress and peace.
My stories also influence and, to a large extent, determine the choices I make and how I live my life. It shapes my life and the situations I find myself in.
Said another way, my mental field – with its labels, mental images, and interpretations – shape how I perceive and respond to a situation. And my mental field determine, to a large extent, how I live my life and the situations I find myself in.
ALL HAPPENING WITHIN MY SENSE FIELDS
To me, this human self and the wider world happens within my sense fields. More specifically, anything triggering (in the wider world) and triggered (in this human self) happens within my sense fields. It’s all happening within and as what I am.
I get to see that the whole trigger-triggered dynamic is happening within my sense fields, and within and as what I am. And my mental field and it’s labels and interpretations is what creates the whole dynamic.
To the extent we take this in, from direct noticing, it transforms how we relate to triggers and what’s triggered. We cannot any longer wholeheartedly blame anything outside ourselves.
We know it’s all an inside job, and that the solution – apart from sometimes taking care of things in our life situation, is to take care of it in ourselves. Perhaps through working with projections, inquiring into stressful stories, dialog with parts of ourselves, and so on.
ASSUMING THAT OUR SITUATION MIRROR US CLOSELY
Beyond all of these interactions, some seem to assume that our life situations mirror us closely. Whatever is unresolved in ourselves is reflected in our life situation, and whatever clarity and kindness is here is also reflected.
To me, this seems a bit naive and it’s something I can’t really check or verify. At most, I could possibly say that it looks like it, without knowing for certain. (And I personally can’t even say that.) If I take it literally, I would either have to take someone’s word for it (which I won’t), or I’ll have to leave it in the “don’t know but that person says so” category.
There is a more pragmatic way of taking this:
Take it as an what if thought experiment.
What if my current life situation is reflecting something in me, what would it be? What issue in me could create this situation? What happens when I identify and explore that issue?
There is nothing to lose here, apart from perhaps some time and a stressful belief or emotional issue.
INITIAL NOTES & DRAFT FRAGMENTS
Causality
I. Situation trigger issue,
II. Issue creates perception, choices, life
III. Can take situation as reflecting, as if, see what find
….
Perception creates my world
…
It’s all happening within my sense fields. Anything “internal” connected with this human self and anything in the wider world happens within my sense fields. Anything triggering and triggered happens within my sense fields. It happens within and as what I am.
…
My mental field determines how I perceive the triggering situation and also how I respond to it
…
The stories I have about a situation, shapes how I perceive it and respond to it. These stories are the difference between stress and peace. (When I say stories, I mean any mental representation, including mental images.)
…
Here, I find that the trigger is no more “other” than what’s triggered, and what’s triggered is no more “me” than the trigger.